


Answers

by zorilleerrant



Series: Maladaptive Daydreaming [2]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alec Lightwood-centric, Heterosexism, Internalized Biphobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Magnus only shows up at the end, Supportive Jace Wayland, coming to terms with sexuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-01
Updated: 2017-03-01
Packaged: 2018-09-27 19:01:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10040294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zorilleerrant/pseuds/zorilleerrant
Summary: Alec tries to figure out his sexuality, and tries not to get caught up in Jace's, in a world where the parabatai bond shares sexual thoughts and feelings.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so now I've kind of gotten caught up in the philosophical implications of what sexuality actually is, but this sort of thing would definitely impact people's subjective experience of their own sexualities. Alec is bi in this; I'm in no way implying he is or should be bi in canon, and he's still with Magnus. Everyone else is bi, too, except Raphael (who's aroace) and Simon (who's maybe some other kind of mspec) - which may show up depending on how much more I add to this series. (I'm not writing it, but I support everyone who ships Alec with Clary or any other woman.)

_“You mean like when you like dark hair, but he goes for redheads?”_

Alec’s gotten good at implying what he means without saying the words, but it’s harder than that when it comes to asking advice. So far, he’s only gotten well-meaning exhortations not to worry about it, and no one understands why it bothers him, although at least they acknowledge that it does. He’s young, they tell him, and it feels strange now, but the less he fights it, the deeper the magic will burrow into his soul. Soon, he won’t even feel it.

He gets better advice from the men who have women for parabatai, although it’s harder to find them, and even when he does, they get annoyed at some kid prying into their personal lives the way everyone else always feels free to. The Clave doesn’t really like it when men and women tie themselves to each other like that; there’s too high a risk of emotional involvement. And, look, it would be terrible to fall in love with your parabatai, right? Alec laughs.

When he does get answers, they go like this: the ones about women are my thoughts; the ones about men are hers. Oh, I guess I can understand where you’re coming from, I like men a little these days, but I remember what it was like before we were parabatai. Well, you don’t have to worry about that, your parabatai’s a boy, too, isn’t he? It’s honestly not that strange; neither of us really like to think about that sort of thing. There’s a little bit of bleedthrough, but you know what you like, you know?

Alec doesn’t know, but apparently he just has to power through.

 

_“Does it matter whose dreams they are? I mean, they’re just dreams. They’re not real.”_

Alec’s got it down to a science who to ask about what. When it’s something esoteric, something no one’s supposed to know, or at least few people manage to, then teachers come in handy, researchers, experts in their field, and, when in doubt, librarians. They’ll answer questions, give you the broad strokes, and then give you all the resources you need to fill in the blanks yourself. If you ask them about what it means to be parabatai, though, they send you to metaphysics and sometimes thaumatology, and all he’s left with is the picture book his parents gave him when he was six, and boy does that sanitize certain aspects.

When it’s something you’re supposed to know a lot about, something you might still need certain details on, clarification maybe, you ask your peers. Alec usually turns to Jace for that, even though on this one he obviously can’t, and sometimes turns to Izzy, too, because she’s not that much younger, and she can read a hell of a lot faster than he can. Izzy doesn’t want a parabatai, though. She’s creeped out by the entire concept and makes faces if Alec tries to ask her advice. A lot of the other kids get nervous when he talks to them, like he’s going to report back to his parents, or they give him smug looks and refuse to share what they know, and anyway, there’s not that many of them, even if Alec could risk saying anything to the people most likely to guess what he really means.

It doesn’t help to ask his parents. Unless it’s a homework topic, they act like he’s too old to still have that question, or too young to learn the answer. He’s found it’s best to go to the older shadowhunters, the older the better. They’re used to giving out wisdom, for one, because they’re the ones that made it through alive, but also they look at Alec likes he’s so much younger than he is. He likes to think he does a good angelic impression, because it certainly gets him out of trouble enough, but he thinks maybe at a certain point adults stop caring to tell children apart. Or maybe it’s just that, to them, even young adults seem painfully young.

Anyway, they tell him that dreams aren’t based in reality and never have been, that people have weird dreams even when they don’t have parabatai, even when they don’t have any connection to magic, even when they don’t even know the shadow world exists. He learns that it’s normal, especially during puberty, especially with any kind of new bond, especially when they put all these thoughts in kids’ heads these days with talk of health and relationships and couldn’t they just wait until marriage like everyone used to because no one got diseases back then and everyone was happy and never divorced.

Alec’s main takeaway is that it’s _extremely_ common to dream about your parabatai naked and in compromising situations.

 

_“You’ll get used to it. It gets easier after a while.”_

At a certain point, Alec stops being worried about _what if he likes boys_ and starts being worried about _what if he likes girls_. As far as he knows, it’s impossible, or at least really, really rare, to feel both ways, and he can handle being different, but he’s not sure if he can handle being _weird_. He wonders if they would want to study him, or if they’d just go straight to stripping him of his runes. His hands shake when he tries to hold fast to the mantra that _his thoughts are about girls; mine are about boys_ because then at least he can tell where he ends and Jace begins.

The dreams don’t help. He dreams about every shadowhunter who isn’t a member of his family, and sometimes even Jace, and it’s not like he can delineate, because maybe when he dreams about men that’s all him and when he dreams about women that’s all Jace, but there are so many that have men and women both, men with men and women with women and men with women too, and Jace is only the man sometimes, and sometimes it’s Alec, and what does it mean if he’s seeing himself with a woman or Jace with a man? Those dreams might even take more to dissect than the ones that have neither of them, because they’re that much harder to chalk up to brains being weird and ignore and forget. Much harder than the dreams of him and Jace.

Those dreams everyone has, and it’s long since ceased to bother either of them. So at least when he’s staring at the new barista with her look of concentration and a smile just for him, Alec can wonder what he feels about that without hashing out the consequences of _that_ sort of thing, and thank fuck he doesn’t actually have a crush on his brother.

 

_“I’d say there’s no point drawing a line. It’s like how your fighting styles converge.”_

Alec’s gotten used to locking eyes across a crowded room and flashing a smile at someone. He’s even gotten used to flirting, just a little bit, but it all falls apart sooner or later, because he’s mostly channeling Jace, and Jace doesn’t know what the fuck to do when a boy starts flirting with him – it’s almost funny to watch, his confident, give-no-fucks parabatai floundering because the guy in the glittery eyeliner offered to buy him a drink.

He knows it’s his fault that Jace looked and _liked_ just for a minute, and he can’t thank Jace enough for taking him places he can, “just be yourself, you know?”, but at least Alec can be sure he likes eyeliner. The problem is, he doesn’t know what to do with that information. The problem is, once they get past that, past looking at boys out of the corner of his eye, and acknowledging what he feels, past the shared smiles, or at least the tentative grin and the apologetic one, past the introductions and small talk about what they’re both drinking, Alec isn’t even sure what he wants. He can’t take them back to his place, and he’s worried if he goes back to theirs he’ll miss something important. Maybe even get someone killed. And, anyway, he can’t just leave Jace alone, can he? And Jace always comes with him, because he knows if he didn’t Alec wouldn’t turn up at all. The problem is, girls wear eyeliner, too.

And Alec likes the bars and the clubs, he likes the lights and the noise, he likes being in a crowd of people at least some of which, and sometimes most of which, feel the way he does. He’s just not sure what he wants from them. Everything he can imagine seems just a little bit lonely. And he knows he doesn’t definitely need a wife to have children, but it would be so much easier, and maybe he really could find someone to love.

After all, every now and then he feels that little tug that might be him and might be Jace, but when she shoots a skeptical look at Jace’s charming smile and beams at Alec instead, he gets the kind of butterflies that must mean _something_. If Jace stops caring the minute he steps away, they’re probably Alec’s feelings in the first place. Right?

 

_“You’ve just got to learn not to compete, you know?”_

He only really gets confirmation after Clary. There’s such intensity of feeling there, there’s no way Jace and Alec both wouldn’t be drawn into it, but even after they learn she’s Jace’s sister, the feelings don’t go away. Their conversation about it is awkward, stilted, but Jace is so relieved when Alec stumbles his way around it, so relieved it wasn’t him, so relieved they can both finally stop thinking about it. They’re both thankful Jace never liked Izzy.

Alec feels almost lightheaded with how hard it was to say that there’s that little pocket of liking girls in there, but he has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning over finally saying he likes boys, even though Jace has known for years, even though he’s said it every way he could without using the words, because he finally heard himself say them. Because his parabatai listened even though he took so long to say it, because he seemed surprised at the part about women but he didn’t seem upset, because he made that scolding face when Alec said he thought maybe he should just give up on boys altogether.

Because when he brought up Magnus, Jace just smiled back at him and said, “yeah.”

Because Jace pretty much knows he was just practice for Magnus, and instead of being annoyed with it, he’s trying his best to leave them alone together whenever he can. And occasionally whispering really ridiculous platitudes in Alec’s ear, but, honestly, that’s the only way his parabatai really knows how to be genuinely supportive, and that’s one everyone in the family has had to get used to. Jace is a tiny little bit jealous, that would be hard to deny, but he can feel what Magnus means to Alec, and, honestly, after Jace’s last four girlfriends making Alec’s head spin, Alec’s due for two in a row.

 

And Magnus makes it _easy_. He sits, arranging himself with his glass like it’s natural, like he doesn’t have a single worry about what ‘we need to talk’ could possibly mean. And when Alec picks up a glass and downs it, Magnus refills it with a snap of his fingers, not bothering to get up, and acts like Alec accepts alcoholic beverages every time they meet. He sees the fidgeting, and he just smiles.

Alec pours out everything. He says what he’s felt about men, about women, about the people he’s met who have some other gender even though he’s still not sure what that means, he talks about romance and he talks around sex, and he doesn’t look Magnus in the eye. He passes his glass from hand to hand. He knows it can’t be that bad, because Magnus feels that way too, something like that, at least, it’s got to be somewhere close to the way Alec feels, although he can’t shrug off the idea that he’s somehow doing it wrong.

Instead, Magnus takes his hand and thanks him. He says how Alec seemed nervous, but he didn’t want to overstep his bounds, how he’s glad to know there was nothing wrong, just something that hard to put into words. He says he understands about Clary, about how she’s beautiful, about how if things were different, she might have caught his eye instead. He laughs with Alec, the tension broken, and then he conjures tea.

It might be easier to concentrate without more alcohol, but Magnus warm against his side is still almost enough to sidetrack him, if the subject matter were something Alec’s less desperate to know. Before Magnus’s arm wrapped around his shoulders, he would have said comfort and excitement were opposite emotions, but afterward he doesn’t say anything about it for days, bouncing ideas off everyone around him, about all the new sexualities he’s learned words for, about the fluidity of labels and using more than one, about liking boys so much more than girls and how that doesn’t mean he likes girls any less, not about his crush on Clary, although Izzy figures that one out.

Magnus tells him that it’s his choice whether or not to use gay, his choice whether to use it only or too or not at all, and that it makes no difference to Magnus. That it shouldn’t make any difference to anyone who loves him. That it’s a term and not a definition.

And Alec finally, finally has some answers.


End file.
